it mildly, offered no financial
inducements.

"It's good practice for me, though,--quickest way to learn," was all he
vouchsafed when the older man remonstrated.

Yet, had that same father, shrewd capitalist that he was, but taken the
trouble to reason back from premises evident enough, he might have been
the first to realize that this tall son of his, with the keen gray eyes
and a face the strength of which was but increased by the high cheek
bones and squarely molded chin, was scarcely the type of man to sit idly
by enjoying the fruits of another's labor.

And now, after two years more of grinding apprenticeship, he had in mind
something much bigger than the slender volume of verse,--an adventure
into authorship more suited to his metal,--a story for which an intense
personal sympathy would furnish fitting atmosphere, with the final spur
to his ambition a letter from the Atlantic even at the moment stowed
safely away in his pocket.

Some two hours later, after an unexpectedly excellent dinner in the
luxurious dining room, he sauntered over to the hotel desk. There was
no more than the faintest probability that a clerk of the St. Catherine
would be able to tell him how to reach a secret cavern bower above the
Bay of Moons; still, he had to enter an opening wedge somewhere. The one
man on duty was for the moment occupied with another guest, and Blair,
lighting his after-dinner cigar, prepared with leisurely patience to
await his turn.

The guest happened to be a young woman, rather pretty, he casually
decided, although her greatest claim to beauty lay more, perhaps, in the
swift changes in expression of which her face was capable, than in any
actual regularity of line. For lack of anything better to do, Blair
watched idly her encounter with the clerk. There appeared to be some
kind of misunderstanding.

"Awfully sorry it's happened that way, Miss Hastings," the man behind
the desk was saying. He lifted with genuine reluctance the key she had
just laid down. "We'd be mighty sorry to interfere with your work, but
those small rooms always do go first. You know that yourself."

"I hadn't heard about it, though. I didn't know they were all gone." Her
voice quivered with disappointment.

Blair, whose vocation taught him a certain technical sympathy, shot
a swift glance at her. She couldn't be more than twenty-two or
thereabouts, he decided less casually, and went on to observe her still
further. She wore a shabby, b